The Darkest of All Knights
by SorenGladfeldt
Summary: Batman faces his most difficult challenge yet. Can he handle it? Of course he can; for he is Bruce Wayne, Batman-the Darkest of ALL Knights!
1. Chapter 1

It was a typically dark, ominous night in Gotham City that night. The streets were alight thanks in part to the glorious good works of dear old Mr. Edison. Due to peculiar placement of said electrical lights, bizarre-looking shadows were cast about the room, creating an erie atmosphere, evoking thoughts of demons who do stalk the night as well as those silent killers who ply their craft menacingly in the alleyways.

The phone rang silently. It was answered by the single hope and protection that miserable city had: Batman—the Darkest of _All_ Knights! Formerly a good little Episcopalian boy until his parents were ruthlessly robbed of their lives, when he did vow justice in their names, and sought out to bring about an end to all crime in all places as well as a more hopeful future for all, he donned a black suit, trained himself, and thus did aspire to that most lofty of all goals: protector and saviour of the Gotham City!—locking away the moste vile and wicked of all the criminals into the Archam, where they would rot for a thousand eternities or more, until the flames did finally engulf the earth at the very end of time itself!

"What is it that you need?" the Batman did ask of the person who was on the other end of the phone.

"It is that which you must attend to, dear Batman," said the voice on the opposite side of the telephone line. "The Joker and Penguin hath unified and are broke free from the chains which did bind them in Archam. They hath also likely chosen, after much bonding in the prison gym, to fuse into a single being—The Jenguin! They are now most likely loose in the city, wreaking havoc in all places that they do go. Please o Darkest of All Knights, we do need you help!"

"I shall arrive and tend to the situation," the masked one said throatily. "This sort of situation I do not take lightly. Both were truly vile villains, but fused together they render into existence a being of omnicidal tendency who does only desire to destroy and slaughter all in his path."

"When can we expect you?"

"When I arrive."

He hung up the telephone and glanced across the room, mind lost in contemplative thought. The Jenguin was now on the loose, a new kind of villain truly unlike any other which he did previously encounter. What kind of strange bonding could have possibly driven them to the decision to fuse into a single individual? Love? Vile? Perhaps yet another secret as of yet beyond comprehension…

He then did walk over to his walk-in closet. He stepped inside, closed the doors, a light flashed deep within, and the door did open and the Batman, fully clothed, did arrive in his uniform, ready to depart and dispense of they who do willingly do harm unto his home town of Gotham.


	2. Chapter 2

The street lights which did line the avenue created a unique strobe effect as Batman cruised toward his clearly marked goal in the Batmobile. However, a combination of special windshield tinting and his training regimen he designed himself rendered this nothing but a minor optical oddity.

His goal was clearly-cut and specifically designed: find the Jenguin and stop them from doing whatever it was which they were doing that he had been called into stop. Thankfully, he had thought to insert beneath both Joker and Penguin's skin tiny tracking devices, which would allow him to discern their movements should either of them escape (he had done this with all the people he placed in the Archam). If two inmates had fused together into one individual, then they would have _two_ chips beneath their skin—thus they would be doubly easy to track!

The Darkest of All Knights noticed that the screen telling him the directions indicated he should take a right at the very next street. This would require he pull an extremely hard turn which, in most vehicles, would cause all the things in trunk or backseat to fly about wildly—resulting in annoying papers caught beneath the driver's seat and such—but in the Batmobile, he had thought ahead and designed it so have artificial gravity so that even if the car turned upside down, everything would still cling to the spot he had placed it. As he took the turn, sure enough, not a single item was thrown about the cabin. He also felt no significant effects as the vehicle swerved wildly, and he dodged an oncoming semi which did happen to be on the street onto which he was turning.

After a couple awkward seconds, he did finally get the vehicle's path realigned so that it was going perfectly straight, and not swerving about uneasily like a drunken teenage driver—he had decided to leave such offenders as those to the conventional police, as he was better equipped for supervillains and hated having to wash the vomit out of the backseat of the Batmobile.

Despite being a moonless night, the night found a way to become only darker still. Bruce Wayne—the Darkest of _All_ Knights—guessed that this may have been the work of the Jenguin, which would imply that he had the capacity to warp reality itself! Truly this would be a most difficult fight to wage…

Finally, Google maps (**a/n: Mark here: yes, I'm serious, Soren said Google maps—though it originally looked more like 'goggle mapes')** indicated that he had arrived at the location. It was an unpleasant-looking bar. He pondered if he should have arrived plainclothes for this, but shrugged it off. If nothing else, sheer brute force would be his savior tonight…


	3. Chapter 3

**Editor's note: Let me take a second to just say thanks for reading this far. I know plenty of you would probably have just ditched the story after the first chapter or so, so thanks for sticking with me. You would not believe the misspellings, pointless hyperbole, non-sequitur material, and miserable attempts at Shakespearean English I had to filter through just to make this into something enjoyably readable. Anyway, thanks. –Mark Sanchez**

He stepped into the bar. By the look of the place, both exterior and interior, pleasing the health inspector was not their primary concern. If anything, he did smell a rather unpleasant stench wrecking from the water closet, implying horrible things as to the fate of that ill-fated health inspector whom God Himself did frown upon by sending him to this of all bars.

He did walk to the counter. The surface was covered in a filthy grime that would take any janitor or neat-freak mother ages to clean. The product of 20+ years of serving alcohol to the worst—not to mention dirtiest—Gotham City did have to offer. The bartender turned around. He wore an eye patch over his right eye that indicated he knew much experience and a tattoo on his arm indicating that he had been in the service in his younger years. Finally, just below and next to the eye patch were so many teardrop tattoos that it created a veritable waterfall streaming down from his face. This was his victim count.

"What can I get you?" the man asked. He spoke with a voice of gravel, indicating he was of old age and that the many years had not been particularly gentle to this man. While such a voice worked for Tom Waits, it did not at all work for him.

"Where can I find the Jenguin?" the Darkest of All Knights did inquire in a voice most brutally threatening. He knew that both bartender and patrons were eying him viciously and would love to mount his head on the wall in place of that poorly preserved moose head to the right of the front door, and place his body in the water closet along with that unlucky health inspector, so he kept his poker face on.

"Why do you care?" the bartender asked. The tone in his voice indicated that he _did_ in fact know, but was likely in cahoots with the Jenguin and would not surrender the information easily.

The Batman, fully aware that the patrons were at this very moment piecing together a plan to rob him of his life by placing a knife in his back whilst he did converse with the bar tender, and most likely cast his body into the East River. So using the most extreme of all muscles that was his brain, Bruce Wayne, the Batman—the Darkest of _All_ Knights!—did begin to plot a counter strike, which would neutralize all their efforts and allow him to continue his search for the Jenguin in peace—not to mention one piece.

He did then begin to execute his plan. He started such by roundhouse kicking the bartender who was most likely wielding a gun and had teardrop tattoos to prove he was a killer so that his porcelain dentures flew out of his mouth and hit a faded photograph of Elvis Presley with a badly forged autograph which did read _'To my buddy, Chuck. Thanks for the sandwhich!'_ and shattered, sending teeth flying off in all directions like shrapnel.

He then did turn around and proceed to karate chop all the patrons before they could strike him. Then one did come at him with a machine gun, which, based on the markings, rough look and sawed off barrel, he deduced was a fully automatic weapon, illegally imported from Afghanistan, indicated that the man who did wield it was likely also a terrorist hateful of all things that we do collectively consider American. This infuriated Batman, for even the Joker himself—prior to fusing with Penguin and becoming Jenguin—stood for his country, even if his favorite thing to do in life was to blow parts of said country up, so he did lunge at the man wielding the weapon, kicked it with such galactic force that it did shatter into a hundred trillion microscopic pieces, and then finally punched the man who had been wielding the weapon until said weapon ceased to existed so very hard that he opened up a rift in the very fabric of the universe itself, into which the Darkest of All Knights did stuff the man. He then left the bar in ruins. He did not, as his personal creed prohibits, kill a single patron, but instead simply rendered them all incapacitated. He let off a small-level explosive in the street so the police would be summoned and arrest the miscreants who had nearly killed him.

As the very last vapors of the small incendiary device wafted up toward the sky, the Darkest of All Knights did step into the Batmobile, and drive off into the night, in further search of the Jenguin, and any information regarding the fused supervillain's evil plans for Gotham City…


End file.
